“The increase in acts of censorship, intimidation, and violence against journalists covering topics related to Kurdish issues in the past month is deeply concerning. RSF calls on the authorities not to further undermine the right to information and to end the taboo surrounding this subject. Journalists must be able to freely cover everything related to the Kurdish population and the negotiation process initiated by the Turkish government with the Kurdish political class. The population expects its right to information to be respected.

In less than a month, RSF has recorded at least six damning cases of press freedom violations targeting coverage of the Kurdish question.

• An article published on 19 January on the news site Bianet.org – an RSF partner in Türkiye– entitled “Women and Kurds are overrepresented among young people not in employment in Türkiye” was censored on 4 February by an Istanbul judge on the grounds that it “threatened national security.” While the Turkish version remains accessible, the English version had to be removed from the site. In an interview with journalist Nalin Öztekin, Halil Ibrahim Kilic, a representative of the KONDA polling institute, simply mentioned the isolation of young people who are unemployed and uneducated, with particular reference to Kurdish and Arab minorities.

• Freelance journalist Rusen Takva had to take his case to the Constitutional Court to get his account on the social media platform X (67,000 followers) unblocked after it had been suspended for over a year. He was arrested on 15 February 2025, while covering protests against the appointment of a government administrator to replace the mayor of Van, a city on the border with Iran. The mayor belonged to the DEM, a pro-Kurdish party that is the third largest in the Turkish Parliament and a mediator in the peace process. This specialist in Kurdish issues and migration affairs was accused of disseminating false images of a police operation in the town hall, considered to be “disinformation” constituting a “threat to national security.” Even though the Van public prosecutor's office dismissed the charge of “disinformation” on 15 September 2025, it remains suspended to this day. “In one year, four accounts belonging to me, created one after the other, were censored by judges,” he told RSF, lamenting that he was unable to reach as many followers from his new account when he was covering the recent demonstrations in support of the Kurds in Rojava in northern Syria.

• The head of the regional office of the independent news agency ANKA in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Ahmet Ün, and freelance journalist Metin Yoksu were brutally attacked by law enforcement officers while covering a demonstration march toward the border on 22 January in Suruç, a district in Sanliurfa Province,. with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. Ahmet Ün was wounded in the knee by rubber bullets and Metin Yoksu was wounded in the face by a tear gas canister. Reporter Bekir Seyhanli for Ihlas (IHA) news agency was wounded in the leg on the same day when he was hit by an armoured vehicle.

• As pro-Kurdish protests gain momentum in the southeast of the country, some international media representatives have told RSF that they are reluctant to travel to the region or send reporters there for fear of reprisals. This risk is evidenced by the arrest of French journalist Raphaël Boukandoura, who was detained on 19 January while covering a demonstration announced in Sarigazi district in the southern outskirts of Istanbul by the pro-Kurdish DEM party, then released on 21 January from a detention centre in Istanbul.

Three journalists are currently behind bars in Türkiye, which ranks 159 out of 180 countries and territories in the 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index.